


Forgotten Misfortune

by charcolor



Series: Synthesized Civilization [2]
Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Bittersweet, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Sign Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-09 18:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18643369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcolor/pseuds/charcolor
Summary: Ring promised Lui that she'd never go on stage without him, but it must be tempting to break that promise when you're made for singing and you have a voice to be heard.





	Forgotten Misfortune

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same universe as Project Negative-Zero. I hope to write more little side stories in the future that take place in this universe.
> 
> It's not necessary to read Project Negative-Zero to understand this story.

The Vocaloid Next organization had decided to carry out a project that was somewhat of an experiment, known as "Everyone's Vocaloid." Citizens of Nippongakkiko, the bustling musical city where many Japanese Vocaloids thrived, flocked at the opportunity to enter an art contest held by Vocaloid Next. The prize was a great honor. They were to create a Vocaloid design, and the winners' designs would be used as the basis of the new Vocaloids' bodies.

However, the people at Vocaloid Next made a minor oversight: they had no people prepared to lend their voice to the Vocaloids. They considered holding another contest, but it would take much longer to determine a suitable voice than to find suitable designs. Fortunately, they did settle on one volunteer, and so Ring Suzune was soon active and ready to sing. But after recording a few songs for demonstration, she refused to continue performing.

"Not until Lui's ready," she said.

Hibiki Lui was her companion, the other Vocaloid who was yet to receive a voice. Vocaloid Next decided to activate him early as another facet of the experiment, to ultimately answer a new question: how would a Vocaloid without a voice act?

The two of them continued to wait. They shared a charging room in the basement of the Vocaloid Next laboratory, and Ring decided that, to compensate for Lui's muteness, they could teach themselves Japanese sign language. In between lessons, Ring liked to sing. She only knew a few songs, so Lui heard the same melodies a lot, but he didn't mind.

Eventually, Lui knew enough sign language to ask, "Why don't you do shows like other Vocaloids?"

Ring patted his head of soft orange hair. "We're supposed to be companions, right? I don't want to leave you here waiting."

"I'm sure I'll be able to sing eventually!" Lui signed with a grin. "With you!"

"Of course!" Ring clapped her hands and pulled Lui into a tight hug. "I'll never leave you here alone, okay?" She stroked his hair again. "I promise. I'll never go out and perform until you have a voice."

They hardly ever left their charging room, which meant they didn't eat very often, which meant that their battery life was rather short-lived. The reason for this was because the laboratory was always very busy with people that neither of them really knew. Occasionally, one of them would pop their head in and ask how the two of them were doing, and Ring would always say they were doing good while Lui nodded with a polite smile. Then Ring would ask if they found a volunteer for Lui's voice yet, and the person would say something like, "Not yet, but soon we will!" Admittedly, over time those words grew less hopeful and more grating.

"Why don't _you_ do it?" Ring would ask once in a while. The answer varied, but it usually was for one of two reasons. Using the voice of a worker at Vocaloid Next would not be in the spirit of the project; if the designs were created by Vocaloid fans, the voices ought to be as well. The other reason was that it was difficult for them to find a suitable voice for a twelve-year-old boy, and no one in the Vocaloid Next organization would be able to provide that.

"You could use _my_ voice!" Ring had offered once. They laughed and said there was no way it could work.

They usually told Ring that she couldn't truly understand any of this. They were probably right. The only things Ring and Lui knew about Vocaloids were what they found on the old computer sitting in their charging room. They watched video footage of concerts, from the world famous Hatsune Miku, to the remote DJ vflower, and even guest appearances at concerts held by biological people around the world. They admired them all, and Ring would always point to whoever was on stage and say, "We'll be up there too, and we'll always be up there together."

They waited very patiently for two years.

Maybe things could have been a little different if they hadn't been asleep charging that night, but maybe not. They were very fortunate to be living in the basement, but due to the isolation of it and the fact that they only left their charging room once in a long while, when they did leave for the last time, there was no telling how long it had been since the fire.

Of course, the news had spread through Nippongakkiko at this point. "Vocaloid Next just vanished," they would've said in shocked hushes. "No one knows where any of the scientists are. No one knows about Hibiki Lui and Ring Suzune, either. There was a fire, right? I think it was because of some kind of short circuit. Do you think it could've been arson? No, why would anyone set fire to the laboratory? Maybe Ring or Lui got fed up with waiting and set fire to it. But then, wouldn't they have come out by now? I don't know. It's really baffling. It's really sad, isn't it? I feel so bad for Ring and Lui. And it's scary to think about what could have happened to all those people, isn't it? Wouldn't they have burned? Either way, all of the work they did is all gone now. Everything they did for Everyone's Vocaloid. All gone."

But it wasn't all gone. Ring and Lui were still there, completely intact and functional, standing in the midst of charred things that used to have names and debris and rubble from what was likely wooden portions of the building. Imprints of clean tile flooring silhouetted where the faceless, nameless people had fallen. By now, they had all been taken away. Were they taken by investigators of a sort? Or were they the very ashes that rested in piles all over the remains of their home?

The two of them stood like that for a while. Perhaps they were waiting for some kind of miraculous reversal, whatever that could be. Or maybe they were just thinking about the future that had perished so abruptly.

Finally, Lui tugged on Ring's sleeve and, with quaking hands, he signed, "I can never sing."

Ring tightly embraced him, and they fell to their knees in the soot, their thoughts filled only with clueless sorrow.

* * *

_"Fresh news updates on the development of Haruno Sora have come in from AH-Software on their website this morning. We now know that she is going to be built with the Vocaloid 5 engine, as well as her age and appearance. She is seventeen years old, and there are two final designs that have been released to the public."_

Images of a stunningly beautiful girl with hair in a pastel rainbow of hues appeared on the televison screen, above the blinking label reading  _JULY 15 2018._ The news reporter kept speaking, but the volume was quickly turned down as Anri Rune, sitting on her armchair in a red bathrobe, tapped her finger on the remote.

"Ring!" she called, turning her head to look at the kids sitting on the barstools in the kitchenette. There was no sort of divider between the kitchen and living room areas, so Ring and Lui easily looked back at her. "You left your DS over here."

"Oh, sorry!" Ring slipped off the barstool and hurried over to swipe the teal Nintendo 3DS from the couch. "It's 'cause I was playing Animal Crossing, I think. I must've forgot to take it back to my room when I went to get charged."

Rune crossed her arms like a disappointed mother. "You're gonna completely wreck your battery life at this rate. Do you not like sharing a room with your little brother or something?"

"Of course I do!" Ring shouted. She skipped back over to Lui to quickly give him a side hug. "I guess I should just play video games in there, huh?"

Lui shrugged. He was staring down at a plate of hastily microwaved omurice that he'd been slowly picking on with a gloomy face.

Seeing this made Ring's smile quickly fade with an apologetic sigh. She pulled herself back up onto the barstool and signed to Lui. "Do you want to go out today?"

Lui shook his head and signed an apology.

"Are you sure?" Ring asked. "You look really sad. I think we should at least go out for ice cream."

Lui smiled at that, and as he chewed another mouthful of rice, he signed to Rune, "Can we?"

Rune immediately looked at Ring, who dutifully translated the question into spoken Japanese. Rune didn't know any sign language, and she apparently wasn't too eager to learn.

Ring really sympathized with her. When Rune had found them wandering the streets, it had only been about two days since they'd left what was left of the Vocaloid Next laboratory. Rune immediately recognized them as the missing Vocaloids, and invited them to stay in her apartment for a while. "Once I get my Vocaloid lifestyle up and running," she'd said, "we can find a nicer place to live. And you're welcome to sing with me if you want."

Ring firmly refused. "Lui can't sing," she'd explained, "and I'll never sing without Lui."

Rune had been able to work with an established Vocaloid musician for her debut song, Hallelujah Super Idol, which was a thrilling experience for her. "I was a host on Fuji TV for a little while before they laid me off," she'd told Ring and Lui. "I'm kinda glad they did. I think this is gonna be so much better for me."

But it didn't work out. No one else contacted her to make a song, or to tell her anything about making updates to her software as a Vocaloid. Several months later, she finally got her call.

"Your Vocaloid status is being retired."

After witnessing that sort of high hope for a future followed by absolute heartbreak and betrayal, Ring couldn't blame Rune for becoming so jaded and demotivated. She was still very kind to Ring and Lui, though. She worked a job that gave her enough income to pay rent and care for the younger Vocaloids. 

Ring really appreciated everything Rune did despite all the failures that were haunting her, especially for Lui, who never got the chance to talk, let alone sing like he always wanted to do. They both knew that Lui struggled with depression because of that. Hearing news on the TV about an upcoming Vocaloid certainly never helped, even after all these years.

So Rune smiled as kindly as she could and said, "Yeah, ice cream sounds great. Maybe after lunch we'll go out."

Lui grinned and signed "thank you" before going back to eat his omurice at a more eager pace. Ring, satisfied that he was now cheered up, sighed and rested her chin in her hands.

"Ring," Lui signed, "I think you and Rune could probably sing if you wanted to, you know."

"What makes you say that?" Ring signed in reply.

"I was just thinking how I can't sing. But you can. There's no reason for you to be sad like I am."

"Well, I'm not sad," Ring told him. "If I can still do things with you and live like a normal happy biological person, it's okay that I don't sing."

"It's what you were made for," Lui pointed out.

"It's what  _you_ were made for, too."

Lui nodded and lifted another handful of rice into his mouth. After a few quiet moments he signed, "I see."

"Besides, I promised I wouldn't ever go on stage without you." Ring tightly hugged Lui again, this time being hugged in return. "And I mean it," she added aloud. "Singing means nothing if I can't do it with you.

She felt her head being patted, and pulled away from Lui to see Rune standing over her.

"You know," she said, slightly amused, "it's weird to overhear one of your conversations when you only sign half the time."

Ring giggled. Lui did, too, although like everything else, his laughter was silent. That was fine. Everything was fine. They had broken hopes and dreams that they thought about every day, but underneath all the joy and gratitude and companionship they experienced together, it wasn't anything more than forgotten misfortune.

Besides, if they were successful Vocaloids, they'd have less time to go out for ice cream together.

**Author's Note:**

> (just to clarify, this is a fictionalized version of vocaloid next we're talking about. as far as i know, the abandonment of ring and lui had nothing to do with any real fires or real people's deaths. i'm pretty sure the organization no longer exists, though, because they don't have a website anymore.)


End file.
